Before him, not a dozen yards away, was a gathering of bright-clad folk about a silver throne. After a moment of breathlessness and confusion, he concluded that the throne was solid silver; for the being that sat upon it was certainly not human. Nor were those gathered about him.
Eyes as amber as a cat's stared at him unblinking from under a pair of upswept brows. Hair the black of a raven's wing was confined about the wide, smooth, marble-pale brow by a band of the same silver as the throne. The band was centered by an emerald the size of Talaysen's thumb. The face was thin, with high, prominent cheekbones and a sensuous mouth, but it was as still and expressionless as a statue. Peeking through the long, straight hair were the pointed ears that told Talaysen his "host" could only be one of the elven races.
There were elvenkin who were friends and allies to humans. There were more who were not. At the moment, he had no idea which these were, though the odds on their being the latter got better with every passing moment.
The man was clothed in a tunic of emerald-green silk, with huge, flowing sleeves, confined about the waist with a wide silver belt and decorated with silver embroidery. His legs were encased in green trews of the same silk, and his feet in soft, green leather boots. His hands, resting quietly on the arms of his throne, were decorated with massive silver rings, wrought in the forms of beasts and birds.
A young man sat at his feet, clad identically, but without the coronet, and playing softly on a harp. Those about the throne were likewise garbed in silks, of fanciful cut and jewel-bright colors. Some wore so little as to be the next thing to naked; others were garbed in robes with such long trains and flowing sleeves that he wondered how they walked without tripping themselves. Their hairstyles differed as widely as their dress, from a short cap like a second skin of brilliant auburn, to tresses that flowed down the back in an elaborate arrangement of braids and tied locks, to puddle on the floor at the owner's feet, in a liquid fall of silver-white. All of them bore the elven-king's pointed ears and strange eyes, his pale flesh and upswept brows. Some of them were also decorated with tiny quasi-living creations of magic; dragon-belts that moved with the wearer, faerie-lights entwined in the hair.
Talaysen was no fool, and he knew very well that the elves' reputation for being touchy creatures was well-founded. And if these considered themselves to be the enemies of men, they would be all the touchier. Still-they hadn't killed him out of hand. They might want something from him. He went to one knee immediately, bowing his head. As he did so, he saw that his lute was lying on the turf beside him, still in its case.
"You ventured into our holding, mortal," said a clear, dispassionate tenor. He did not have to look up to know that it was the leader who addressed him. "King" was probably the best title to default to; most lords of elvenkin styled themselves "kings."
"Your pardon, Sire," he replied, just as dispassionately. "I pray you will forgive us."
When he said nothing else, the elven-king laughed. "What? No pleas for mercy, no assertions that you didn't know?"
"No, Sire," he replied carefully, choosing his words as he would choose weapons, for they were all the weapon that he had. "I admit that I saw the signs, and I admit that I was too careless to think about what they signified." And he had seen the signs; the vegetation that tried to prevent them from entering the clearing until Rune drew her Iron knife; the Fairie Ring of mushrooms encircling the house. The ash tree growing right through the middle, and the condition of the house itself. . . .
"The mortal who built his house at our very door was a fool, and an arrogant one," the elven-king replied to his thought, his words heavy with lazy menace. "He thought that his God and his Church would defend him against us; that his Iron weapons were all that he needed besides his faith. He knew this was our land, that he built his home against one of our doors. He thought to keep us penned that way. We destroyed him." A faint sigh of silk told him that the king had shifted his position slightly. He still did not look up. "But you were weary, and careless with cold and troubles," the king said. His tone changed, silken and sweet. "You had no real intention to trespass."
Now he looked up; the elf lounged in his throne in a pose of complete relaxation that did not fool Talaysen a bit. All the Bard need do would be to make a single move towards a weapon of any kind at all, and he would be dead before the motion had been completed. If the king didn't strike him down with magic, the courtiers would, with the weapons they doubtless had hidden on their persons. The softest and most languid of them were likely the warriors.
"No, Sire," he replied. "We had no intention of trespass, though we were careless. It was an honest mistake."
"Still-" The elf regarded him with half-closed eyes that did not hide a cold glitter. "Letting you go would set a bad example."
He felt his hands moving towards his instrument; he tried to stop them, but his body was no longer his to control. He picked up his lute, and stripped the case from it, then tuned it.
"I think we shall resolve your problems and ours with a single stroke," the elf said, sitting up on the throne and steepling his hands in front of his chin. "I think we shall keep you here, as our servant, to pay for your carelessness. We have minstrels, but we have no Bards. You will do nicely." He waved his hand languidly. "You may play for us now."
Rune awoke to a thrill of alarm, a feeling that there was something wrong. She sat straight up in her bed-and a faint scrape of movement made her look, not towards the door, but to the back of the cottage, where it was built into the hillside.
She was just in time to see the glitter of an amber eye, the flash of a pointed ear, and the soles of Talaysen's boots vanishing into the hillside as he stumbled through a crack in the rock wall at the rear of the cottage. Then the "door" in the hill snapped shut.
Leaving her alone, staring at the perfectly blank rock wall.
That broke her paralysis. She sprang to her feet and rushed the wall, screaming at the top of her lungs, kicking it, pounding it with hands and feet until she was exhausted and dropped to the ground, panting.
Elves. That was what she'd seen. Elves. And they had taken Talaysen. She had seen the signs and she hadn't paid any attention. She should have known-
The mushrooms, the ash-tree-the bushes that tried to keep us out-
They were all there; the Fairie-circle, the guardian ash, the tree-warriors-all of them in the songs she'd learned, all of them plain for any fool to see, if the fool happened to be thinking.
Too late to weep and wail about it now. There must be something she could do-
There had to be a way to open that door from this side. She felt all over the wall, pressing and turning every rocky projection in hopes of finding a catch to release it, or a trigger to make it open.
Nothing.
It must be a magic door.
She pulled out her knife, knowing the elves' legendary aversion to iron and steel, and picked at anything she found, hoping to force the door open the way she had forced the trees to let them by. But the magic in the stone was sterner stuff than the magic in the trees, and although the wall trembled once or twice beneath her hand, it still refused to yield.
Thinking that the ash tree might be something more than just a tree, she first threatened it with her dagger, then stabbed it. But the tree was just a tree, and nothing happened at all, other than a shower of droplets that rained down on her through the hole in the roof as the branches shook.
Elves . . . elves . . . what do I know about elves? God, there has to be a way to get at them, to get Talaysen out! What do I have to use against them?
Not much. And not a lot of information about them. Nothing more than was in a half-dozen songs or so. She paced the floor, her eyes stinging with tears that she scrubbed away, refusing to give in, trying to think. What did she know that could be used against them?
The Gypsies deal with them all the time-
How did the Gypsies manage to work with them? She'd heard the Gypsies spoken of as "elf-touched" time and time again
. . . as if they had somehow won some of their abilities from the secretive race. What could the Gypsies have that gave them such power over the elvenkin?
Gypsies, elves-
She stopped, in mid-stride, balancing on one foot, as she realized the secret. It was in one of the songs the Gypsy called Nightingale had taught her.
Music. They can be ruled by music. They can't resist it. That's what the song implied, anyway.
She dashed to her packs and fumbled out her fiddle. Elves traditionally used the harp, but the fiddle was her instrument of choice, and she wasn't going to take a chance with anything other than her best weapon. She tuned the lovely instrument with fingers that shook; placed it under her chin, and stood up slowly to face the rock wall.
Then she began to play.
She played every Gypsy song she knew; improvised on the themes, then played them all over again. The wailing melodies sang out over the sound of the storm getting worse overhead. She ignored the distant growl of thunder, and the occasional flicker of lightning against the rock in front of her. She concentrated all of her being on the music, the hidden door, and how much she wanted that door to open.
Let me in. Let me in. Let me in to be with him. Let me in so I can get him free!
She narrowed her eyes to concentrate better. She thought she felt something-or rather, heard something, only it was as if she had an extra ear somewhere deep inside, that was listening to something echo her playing.
Echo? No, it wasn't an echo, this was a different melody. Not by much-but different enough that she noticed it. Was she somehow hearing the music-key to the spell holding the door closed, resonating to the tune she was playing?
She didn't stop to think about it; obeying her instinctive feelings, she left the melody-line she was playing and strove to follow the one she heard with that inner ear. She felt a tingle along her arms, the same tingle she had felt when Gwyna had been transformed back to her proper form.
Not quite a match . . . she tried harder, speeded up a little, trying to anticipate the next notes. Closer . . . closer . . .
As she suddenly snapped into synch with that ghostly melody, the door in the wall cracked open-then gaped wide.
She found herself in a tunnel that led deep into the hillside, a tunnel that was floored with darkness, and had walls and a ceiling of swirling, colored mist. If she had doubted before, this was the end of doubts; only elves would build something like this.
The door remained open behind her. She could only hope it would stay that way and not snap shut to block her exit.
If she got a chance to make one.
She clutched her fiddle in her hand and ran lightly down the tunnel; it twisted and turned like a rabbit's run, but at length she saw light at the end. More than that, she heard music, and with her ears, not whatever she'd used to listen before. Music she knew; Talaysen's lute. But not his voice; he was not singing, and that lack shouted wrongness at her. There was a stiffness to his playing as if he was being constrained by something, forced to play against his will.
She ran harder, and burst through a veil of bright-colored mist at the very end of the tunnel. She stumbled onto a field of grass as smooth and close-clipped as a carpet, under a sky of stone bejeweled with tiny, artificial stars and a featureless moon of silver. Small wonder the songs spoke of elven "halls"; for all that they aped the outdoors, this was an artifice and would never look like a real greensward.
The elves gathered beneath that artificial moon in the decorous figures of a pavane stopped and turned to stare in blank surprise at her. Talaysen stood between them and her-and his expression was of surprise warring with fear.
She knew she daren't give them a moment to get over their surprise; if they did, they'd attack her, and if they attacked her, they'd kill her. The songs made that perfectly clear as well.
She grasped for the only weapon she had.
So you want to dance, do you?
She shoved the fiddle under her chin, set bow to strings, and played. A wild reel, a dance-tune that never failed to bring humans to their feet, and called the "Faerie Reel." She hoped there was more in the name than just the clever title-
There was. Or else the elves were as vulnerable to music as Gypsy legend suggested. They seized partners by the hands and began flinging themselves through the figures of the dance, just as wildly as she played, as if they couldn't help themselves.
She didn't give them a respite, either, when that tune had been played through three full sets; she moved smoothly from that piece into another, then another. Each piece was repeated for three sets; she had a guess from some of what the Gypsy songs said that "three" was a magic number for binding and unloosing, and she wanted to bind them to their dancing, keeping them occupied and unable to attack.
She played for them as fiercely as she had for the Ghost, willing them to dance, faster and faster, until their eyes grew blank, and their limbs faltered. Finally some of them actually began dropping from exhaustion, fainting in the figures of the dance, unable to get up again-
One dropped; then two, then a half dozen. The rest staggered in the steps, stumbling over the fallen ones as if they could not stop unless they were as unconscious as the ones on the ground seemed to be. Another pair fainted into each other's arms, and the elven-king whirled, his face set in a mask of un-thought.
Then she changed her tune. Literally.
She brought the tune home and paused, for just a heartbeat. The elves' eyes all turned toward her again, most of them blank with weariness or pleading for her to stop. The elven-king, stronger than the rest, staggered towards her a step or two. She set bow to the strings again, and saw the flicker of fear in their eyes-
And she launched into the Gypsy laments.
Before she had finished the first, the weariest of the elves were weeping. As she had suspected, the Gypsy songs in particular held some kind of strange power over the elves, a power they themselves had no defense against. By the time she had completed the last sorrowing lament that Nightingale had taught her, even the elf with the coronet was in tears, helpless, caught in the throes of grief that Rune didn't understand even though she had evoked it.
She took her bow from her strings. Now there was no sound but soft sobbing.
They're mine. No matter what they try, they're too tired and too wrought up to move fast. I can play them into the ground, if I have to.
I think. Provided my arms hold out. . . .
Elves, she couldn't help but notice resentfully, looked beautiful even when weeping. Their eyes and cheeks didn't redden; their noses didn't swell up. They simply sobbed, musically, perfect crystal tears dropping from their clear amber eyes to trickle like raindrops down their cheeks.
She looked for the one with the coronet; he was climbing slowly to his feet, tears in his eyes, but his chin and mouth set with anger. She strode quickly across the greensward to get past Talaysen as the elven-king brought himself under control, and by the time he was able to look squarely at her, she was between him and her Master, with her bow poised over the strings again, and her face set in an expression of determination she hoped he could read.
"No!" he shouted, throwing out a hand, fear blazing from his eyes.
She removed her bow a scant inch from the strings, challenge in hers.
"No-" he said, in a calmer voice. "Please. Play no more. Your magic is too strong for us, mortal. We have no defense against it."
About him, his people were recovering; some of them, anyway. The ones who could control themselves, or who had not fainted with exhaustion earlier, were helping those who were still lying on the velvety green grass; trying to wake them from their faint, helping them to their feet.
Rune said nothing; she only watched the elven king steadily. He glanced at his courtiers and warriors, and his pale face grew paler still.
"You are powerful, for all that you are a green girl," he said bitterly, turning a face full of carefully suppressed anger back to her. "I knew that the man was powerful, and I co
nfined him carefully, wrapping his music in bonds he could not break so that he could not work against us. But you! You, I had not expected. You have destroyed my defenses; you have brought my people to their knees. No!" he said again, as she inadvertently lowered her bow a trifle. "No, I-beg you. Do not play again! Elves do not weep readily; many more tears, and my people may go mad with grief!"
"All right," she replied steadily, speaking aloud for the first time in this encounter, controlling her voice as Talaysen had taught her, though her knees trembled with fear and her stomach was one ice-cold knot of panic. "Maybe I won't. If you give me what I want."
"What?" the elven-king replied swiftly. "Ask and you shall have it. Gold, jewels, the treasures of the Earth, objects of enchantment-"
"Him," she interrupted, before he could continue the litany, and perhaps distract her long enough to work against both of them. "I want my lover back again."
Then she bit her lip in vexation. Damn. Damn, damn, damn. She had meant to say "Master," but her heart and her nerves conspired to betray her.
"Lover?" the elven-king said, one eyebrow rising in disbelief as he looked from Talaysen to her and back to Talaysen. "Lover? You-and he? What falsehood is this?" But then he furrowed his brows, and peered at her, as if he was trying to look into her heart. "Lover, no-" he said slowly, "but beloved, yes. I had not thought of this, either. Small wonder your music had such power against me, with all the strength of your heart behind it."
"You can't keep him," she said swiftly, trying to regain the ground she had lost with her inadvertent slip of the tongue. "If you can see our thoughts, then you know I am not lying to you. If you cage a songbird, it won't sing; if you keep a falcon mewed up forever, it will die. Do the same to my Master, and he'll die just as surely as that falcon will. He gave up everything for freedom-take it from him, and you take away everything that makes him a Bard. He'll waste away, and leave you with nothing. And I will never forgive you. You'll have to kill me to rid yourself of me, and the cost will be higher than you may want to pay, believe me."
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